Because I’d read Sara Ackerman’s debut novel, Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers, I continued with her second novel.
Told in the dual, third-person perspectives of Eva Cassidy and Lieutenant Clark Spencer interspersed with real memos, headlines, and military communications leading up to, during, and after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, The Lieutenant’s Nurse is a fascinating interweaving of real and fictional events.
Eva, an army nurse, comes to Hawaii carrying a secret that isn’t revealed up front. The reader must seek clues that are sparsely given relating to an incident back in Michigan that nearly ruined her life and became the reason she joined the Army Crops nursing division. Clark’s POV reveals the tragic loss of a beloved wife and their unborn child. Rich in historical details, the novel doesn’t get bogged down in too many details about the attack on Pearl Harbor. Instead, the novel focuses on Clark and Eva, and their experiences before, in the midst of, and after the attack.
Though the characters are likable and sympathetic, the POV seems a bit distant at times, and Eva and Clark’s crossing the Pacific on the Lurline ocean liner, even with their requisite shipboard romance, seems a bit too long an introduction to the heart of the action.
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Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers and The Lieutenant’s Nurse are both available through Amazon.
